CONSEQUENCES.
The first consequence of these principles is, that the laws alone can
decree punishments for crimes, and this authority can only rest with
the legislator, who represents collective society as united by a social
contract. No magistrate (who is part of society) can justly inflict
punishments upon another member of the same society. But since a
punishment that exceeds the legally fixed limit is the lawful punishment
_plus_ another one, a magistrate can, under no pretext of zeal or the
public good, add to the penalty already decreed against a delinquent
citizen.
The second consequence is, that the sovereign, who represents society
itself, can only form general laws, obligatory on all; he cannot judge
whether any one in particular has broken the social compact, for in
that case the nation would be divided into two parties, one represented
by the sovereign, asserting the violation of such contract; the other by
the accused, denying the same. Hence the necessity of a third person to
judge of the fact; in other words, of a magistrate, whose decisions shall
simply consist of affirmations or denials of particular facts, and shall
also be subject to no appeal.
The third consequence is this: if it were proved that the severity of
punishments were simply useless (to say nothing of being directly opposed
to the public good and to the very object of preventing crimes), even
in that case it would be contrary not only to those beneficent virtues
that flow from an enlightened reason, which prefers to rule over happy
human beings than over a flock of slaves, the constant victims of timid
cruelty, but it would be also contrary to justice and to the nature of
the social contract itself.